Press Release - Juxtapoz Clubhouse 2018
Rachel Hayden
”Lipgloss and One Strand of Hair”
Acrylic and Flashe on Canvas.
9 x 12 Inches. 2018.
First Amendment Gallery
Juxtapoz Clubhouse 2018
Downtown Miami, Florida
Opening Reception - December 5th to 9th.
info@firstamendmentgallery.com
First Amendment is excited to be returning to Downtown Miami this December to take part in Juxtapoz’s annual Clubhouse alongside Mana Contemporary. First Amendment will to be showing new works by Christopher Martin, Henry Fey, Jet Martinez, Oliver Hawk Holden, Rachel Hayden, Riley Holloway, Stacey Rozich, and Troy Lovegates. To receive a preview of the exhibition contact info@firstamendmentgallery.com today.
Juxtapoz will curate 7 storefronts at 32—60 SE 1st Street, multiple art installations at the adjoining Flagler Station arcade at 48 East Flagler, as well as a full Mexico City group show and pop-up installation show at the location of last year’s Clubhouse, 200 East Flagler Street.
Learn more about each of the artists below.
Christopher Martin
"Rope Pattern #1"
Fiber. 50.5 x 50 Inches. 2018.
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN
Martin is currently giving Black representation in American traditional tattooing with making the connection of naval passage across large bodies of water and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. By recreating classic tattoo imagery on cotton, he reclaims the material from its own colonial past and ties to slavery in an effort to bring both the narrative of tattooing and his own personal narrative into conversation.
Christopher Martin is a southern-raised artist from North Carolina and is currently based in San Francisco.
Through his work, Martin tells the story of a young man coming from the South. While attending school at North Carolina A&T for Graphic Design, Martin created hand cut and sewn banners with logo-like images to tell a story relevant to his own culture and history. With cotton representing the toil and labor of those captured in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Martin hand-cuts and sews tapestry pieces to represent the modern-day experience of the African diaspora.
His work continues in this medium while also working as a freelance graphic designer, electric tattoo artist, photographer, videographer, and teacher, teaching art classes and workshops throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Henry Fey
”Pound Cake”
Acrylic on Canvas.
34 x 30 Inches. 2018.
HENRY FEY
Henry Fey ( b. 1993 Los Angeles, Ca )
Henry Fey is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Using painting as a tool, he draws from his surroundings and re-contextualizes images through abstraction.
Jet Martinez
”Pasatiempo”
Acrylic on Wood Panel.
40 x 30 Inches. 2018.
JET MARTINEZ
The core of my practice stems from my interest in locating folk art’s place in a globalized world. I seek to create a multi-cultural dialogue that explores the consistencies of visual culture throughout time, beginning with ancient artisans and extending to contemporary artists. I was convinced from an early age growing up in Cuernavaca, Mexico that communities can be sustained through art making. Like the craftspeople who integrate life into the creation of ceramics and textiles—nothing less than a certain form of magic—I embrace the imperfections of the handmade—the organic forms and vibrant colors which have the power to remove the individual identity of the artist in favor of a more universal expression of “folk art.”
By uniting the imagery of traditional Mexican folk art with the vernacular of urban contemporary art, I’m trafficking in the nuanced relationship between artistic tradition and global influences, in the process finding the relationship between community and culture. The lineage of west coast mural work looms large in my practice: art functioning as a symbol of resistance transforming overlooked spaces into something beautiful—a daily revolution in the form of creating.
An influential figure in Bay Area public art, Oakland-based artist Jet Martinez (b. 1973) is known for creating vibrant works of art that engage the traditions of Mexican folk art with contemporary aesthetics. Originally from the small beach town of Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico, and raised in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Martinez takes inspiration from his native culture’s rich traditions of pottery, weaving and embroidery, enlivening the rigid architecture of urban environments with ornate patterns and abstract forms.
A fellow of the Kala Art Institute, in Berkeley, CA with his wife, Kelly Ording, Martinez’s work has been exhibited internationally at Joseph Gross Gallery, 111 Minna Gallery, White Walls Gallery, Museo de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, and Syracuse University, among others. His murals have been commissioned in locales as diverse as Oaxaca, New Orleans, Brazil, and Zurich, and by the San Francisco Arts Commission/San Francisco General Hospital, the cities of Denver, Colorado and San Jose, California, and companies such as Facebook, Hilton, Kiehl’s, John Fluevog and Red Bull.
Martinez served as the director of San Francisco’s acclaimed Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) for 10 years from 2004 to 2014. His work with CAMP has been integral to the creation and preservation of public art in the Mission District, a historically Latino neighborhood known as a bastion for underground arts and culture.
OLIVER HAWK HOLDEN
I think there is this really crude point in comedy when it addresses failure, where it come down to a fine point thats kinda stabbing you in the gut a little bit. It is kinda funny but it kinda hurts in the way life does, the moments between your thoughts and the wrinkles and cracks in your face. I am a multi media artist working with Sculpture, Painting, Electronics, Printmaking and Video all at once. Use of text and symbols and activating parts and switches to engage and converse with viewers. The work shows weight of the human existence and thoughts of life, death, and in-between anxieties. This weight coming down on man kind and all the strange things it makes him do. Political under tones pass throughout the work in reaction to the times but are not necessary defended.
Rachel Hayden
”Re-entering A Room After Leaving In Tears 30 Minutes Ago”
Acrylic and Flashe on Panel.
12 x 12 Inches. 2018.
RACHEL HAYDEN
In painting, I’m seeking logic and control in the mess of life. I’m searching for a concise visual description of a floaty feeling, or a falling feeling. I’m making a collection of small acrylic paintings using recurring images: gentle hands, drops of sweat and tears, and the sun and moon. These images are ubiquitous, but in my work I like to think of them as my own set of icons. Over time, I am developing a personal language, using these repeat images as characters in my alphabet.
When I make a painting I want to approach a difficult or ambiguous feeling with childlike simplicity. I use pure and bright colors and recognizable shapes. When I choose images to paint, I look for constants— the things that will always be part of my life, but whose significance may change to me when placed in different scenarios. By adopting these images into my alphabet I feel a new love and ownership of them; They become my prized possessions. I think of my images as game pieces I can move around on a board, or knick knacks I can arrange on a shelf, or a sticker collection. In painting them, i have power to playfully manipulate forces greater than myself, and find control over my own visual narrative.
Rachel Hayden is a Baltimore-based painter originally from Cincinnati Ohio. In addition to painting, she works as a museum educator at The Walters Art Museum, teaching classes for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Her work deals with gentle touches and sensations both physical and emotional, as well as phenomena of time and space.
iley Holloway
”Fortune 500”
Gouache and Ink on Paper
20 x 16 Inches.
White Frame. 2018.
RILEY HOLLOWAY
My work begins with the individual. I've always been an observer of people and run into individuals who inspire me through their fashion, personality, or conversation. I am for creating pieces that are rich in storytelling, free from constraints, and true to the person I'm painting. This is accomplished by letting the individual's narrative drive my work. I use traditional drawing and oil painting techniques to communicate the qualities of each individual.
Stacey Rozich
"Please To Meet You”
Watercolor and gouache on Paper.
Hand Painted Frame.
30 x 24 Inches. 2018.
STACEY ROZICH
Stacey Rozich is a Los Angeles-based artist who work draws inspiration from a broad spectrum of folkloric references. She crafts vignettes that explore intimate human conditions through striking and familiar imagery. Her work depicts scenarios that recall one’s own relationship with the mortal world and the realm of dreams through premonition, symbolism, and nostalgia.
Troy Lovegates
”Dingus”
Found Wood, Hand Carved with Acrylic and Oil Stick.
66 x 24 x 12 Inches.
2018.
TROY LOVEGATES
Troy Lovegates, widely known as "OTHER", is an artist currently based in Oakland, CA. His works are heavily patterned and saturated with hyper color. With a knack for the use of found materials and the unification of wildly disparate elements, both material and aesthetic, Lovegates uses everything from spray paint, oil stick, water color, acrylic, and ink to create works on canvas and paper as well as wooden sculptures.
A self-described "collector of lost souls,” the artist focuses on the figure as story, building motifs through heavily condensed mark making. The figures in his work are sympathetically drawn from equal parts caricature and realistic observation. Lovegates is constantly revising and adapting previous efforts, reintegrating them into current bodies of work that reflect the history of their making. His hand-carved wooden pieces bring his paintings to life as objects. The powerfully weathered people in his imagery are often real, captured through photographs and observation taken while on his travels over the years. Motivated by his own dreams and nightmares, Troy Lovegates works are emotive arrests of an awe-inspiring imagination.